Stanford University

Governance

FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

The Virus and the Vote: Administering the 2020 Election in a Pandemic

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Today, the Healthy Elections Project, a joint effort of Stanford and MIT, released a new 800 page report based on their research and findings on the administration of the 2020 election. The Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project was developed to ensure that the 2020 election could proceed with integrity, safety, and equal access. The Project aimed to do this by bringing together academics, civic organizations, election administrators, and election administration experts to assess and promote best practices. 

The first COVID-19-related death in the United States was announced on February 29, 2020, the day of the South Carolina primary. International news about the early spread of the coronavirus and the initial reaction from American public health professionals to its quick spread in this country made it clear that the presidential election was facing an existential threat. Election officials who held primaries in early- and mid-March found themselves increasingly making public health decisions to guard both their voters and their staff. The larger societal challenges quickly overwhelmed the ability of states to hold primaries at all, leading to hastily canceled and postponed elections. The one early primary that was not postponed, Wisconsin, provided cautionary tales in the form of closed polling places, poll worker shortages, and massive transitions to mail balloting.

Nate Persily

Nathaniel Persily

James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School | Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute | Professor, by courtesy, Political Science | Professor, by courtesy, Communication | Co-director, Cyber Policy Center
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A Compendium of Research from the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project

Strengthening Democracies In The Digital Age

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Technological cooperation is one of the key topics of the transatlantic agenda. The capacity of nations to innovate and to regulate will define impact their future relevancy. Beyond setting incentives to enhance innovation, Regulation and setting standards is at the forefront of the geopolitical dimension of tech policy.
 
On June 24 from 12:00 to 1:00 pm Pacific Time, Germany’s Ambassador to the United States, Dr. Emily Haber, International Policy Director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, Marietje Schaake, and Chris Riley, Senior Fellow for Internet Governance at the R Street Institute, will discuss the opportunities and challenges of the digital transformation for the US and the EU with respect to strategies to strengthen democratic public spheres, restore digital trust and promote liberal liberal-democratic values through a global digital order. Nathanial Persily, co-director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, will introduce and moderate the event.
 
This event is part of the series “Meeting America,” virtual talks with the German Ambassador and American stakeholders across the United States.
 
This event is co-sponsored by the German Consulate General San Francisco and the American Council on Germany.

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About the Speakers

 

Dr. Emily Margarethe Haber has been German Ambassador to the United States since June 2018.   Prior to her transfer to Washington, DC, she served in various leadership functions at the Foreign Office in Berlin. In 2009, she was appointed Political Director and, in 2011, State Secretary, the first woman to hold either post. Thereafter, she was deployed to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, serving as State Secretary in charge of homeland security and migration policy from 2014 until 2018.   Emily Haber has many years of experience with Russia and the former Soviet Union. She held various posts at the German Embassy in Moscow, including Head of the Political Department. At the Foreign Office in Berlin, she served as Head of the OSCE Division and as Deputy Director-General for the Western Balkans, among other positions.   Emily Haber holds a PhD in history and is married to former diplomat Hansjörg Haber. The couple has two sons.

Chris Riley is R Street’s senior fellow of Internet Governance. He will be leading the Knight Foundation-funded project on content moderation, running convenings of a broad range of stakeholders to develop a framework for platforms managing user-generated content. Chris will also be doing policy analysis around content regulatory issues related to that project, including work on Section 230 in the United States and the Digital Services Act in the European Union.

Prior to joining R Street, Chris led global public policy work for the Mozilla Corporation, managing their work on the ground in Washington, D.C., Brussels, Delhi and Nairobi from Mozilla’s San Francisco office, and worked with government policymakers, stakeholders in industry and civil society, and internal teams at Mozilla to advance their mission. Prior to that, he worked in the U.S. Department of State to help manage the Internet Freedom grants portfolio designated by Congress to support technology development, digital safety training, research and related work as a part of advancing the expression of human rights online in internet-repressive countries.

Chris received his bachelor’s in computer science from Wheeling Jesuit University, his PhD in computer science from Johns Hopkins University and his JD from Yale Law School.

Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of Political Science, Communication, and FSI.

Marietje Schaake is the International Policy Director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. 

 

Marietje Schaake

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Marietje Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.


 

Non-Resident Fellow, Cyber Policy Center
Fellow, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
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Assessing National Digital Identity Systems: The Risks And Rewards

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With the rise of national digital identity systems (Digital ID) across the world, there is a growing need to examine their impact on human rights. While these systems offer accountability and efficiency gains, they also pose risks for surveillance, exclusion, and discrimination. In several instances, national Digital ID programmes started with a specific scope of use, but have since been deployed for different applications, and in different sectors. This raises the question of how to determine appropriate and inappropriate uses of Digital ID programs, which create an inherent power imbalance between the State and its residents given the personal data they collect.

On Wednesday, June 23rd @ 10:00 am Pacific Time, join Amber Sinha of India’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS), Anri van der Spuy of Research ICT Africa (RIA) and Dr. Tom Fischer of Privacy International in conversation with Kelly Born, Director of the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative and fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by digital identity systems, a proposed framework for assessing trade-offs and ensuring that human rights are adequately protected, and a discussion of experiences in translating and adapting new digital ID assessment framework by CIS and RIA to different contexts and geographies.

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Amber Sinha 
Anri van der Spuy
Dr. Tom Fischer 
Kelly Born

The Trump Takedown: An Online Discussion With Members of the Facebook Oversight Board

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the trump takedown

The Facebook Oversight Board will release its decision concerning the takedown of President Donald Trump's account this Wednesday. On Thursday, May 6, from 2:00 to 3:15 PM Pacific, members of the Oversight Board will be joined by the leaders of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center to discuss the Board's decision. Two members of the Oversight Board, Michael McConnell and Julie Owono, will be joined by Nate Persily, Renee DiResta, Daphne Keller, Marietje Schaake and Alex Stamos to discuss the decision and its implications for Facebook's handling of similar controversies around the world.

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Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East

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Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East Agenda (1 of 2)

Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East Agenda (2 of 2)

Panel 1: Digital Activism

Tuesday, May 25, 2021 | 9-10:30 am PT

Opening Remarks: Marc Lynch, Eileen Donahoe, and Larry Diamond

Moderator: Hesham Sallam

  • Wafa Ben-Hassine: “The Hyper-Aware and Not-So-Aware: What's Next for the MENA Region's Activists and Society at Large Vis-a-Vis the Internet?”
  • Adel Iskander: “Re(Membering) Culture and Heritage: Egypt's Latest Political Turf War”
  • Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld: “Civilian Behavior on Social Media During Civil War”
  • Joshua Tucker: “Beyond Liberation Technology? The Recent Uses of Social Media by Pro-Democracy Activists”

 

Panel 2: Authoritarian Abuses of Internet Technologies

Thursday, May 27, 2021 | 9-10:30 am PT

Moderator: Marc Lynch

  • Marwa Fatafta: “Transnational or Cross-Border Digital Repression in the MENA Region”
  • Andrew Leber: “Social Media Manipulation in the MENA: Inauthenticity, Inequality, and Insecurity” (Co-authored paper with Alexei Abrahams)
  • Marc Owen Jones: “Tracking Adversaries: The Evolution of Manipulation Tactics on Gulf Twitter”
  • Xiao Qiang: “Chinese Digital Authoritarianism and Its Global Impact”

 

Panel 3: Government Reshaping of Norms and Practices to Constrain Online Activity

Tuesday, June 1, 2021 | 9-10:30 am PT

Moderator: Eileen Donahoe

  • Ahmed Shaheed: “Binary Threat: How State Cyber Policy and Practice Undermines Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa Region”
  • Mona Elswah, Mahsa Alimardani: "The Hurdles Involved in Content Moderation in the MENA Region"
  • Mohamed Najem: “The Role of the Gulf in Governing Digital Space in the Arab Region”
  • James Shires: “The Techno-Regulation of Critical Communications Infrastructures and Their Political Potential in the Gulf”
  • Alexei Abrahams: “The Web (In)Security of Middle Eastern Civil Society and Media”

 

Panel 4: Cross-Border Information Operations

Thursday, June 3, 2021 | 9-10:30 am PT

Moderator: Larry Diamond

  • Alexandra Siegel: “Official Foreign Influence Operations: Transnational State Media in the Arab Online Sphere”
  • Hamit Akin Unver: “Russian Disinformation Operations in Turkey: 2015-2020”
  • Shelby Grossman and Renee DiResta: “In-House vs. Outsourced Trolls: How Digital Mercenaries Shape State Influence Strategies”
  • Nathaniel Gleicher: “Covert Manipulation, Overt Influence, Direct Exploit: Understanding and Countering Influence Operations in the Middle East and Beyond”
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Reversing the Tide: Towards a New US Strategy to Support Democracy and Counter Authoritarianism

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The Task Force on US Strategy to Support Democracy and Counter Authoritarianism launched in September 2020 as a joint effort of Freedom House, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the McCain Institute. It has conducted itself as a working Task Force, with the active engagement of its members. The final recommendations of this report draw on the significant experience of the Task Force members, who contributed their deep expertise to help create recommendations that are both forward-looking and practical.

Eileen Donahoe of the Stanford Cyber Policy's Global Digital Policy Incubator, was a working group lead. 

 

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Antitrust and the Tech Platforms

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The United States has arguably seen more significant antitrust developments in the last few months than over the past twenty years. Last December the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam filed parallel antitrust suits against Facebook, in part related to the acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. In October, the Department of Justice and 11 states filed a complaint against Google for the alleged monopolization of mobile search and search advertising. Then in December, two multistate coalitions (one led by Texas, the other by Colorado) filed their own antitrust lawsuits against Google. Meanwhile in November, European Union officials also accused Amazon of breaking EU competition rules, and this January a class-action antitrust lawsuit was filed against Amazon here in the U.S. What are the bases of these suits, how have the platforms responded, and what can we expect to see next?

Join Kelly Born, affiliate at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and Director of the Cyber Initiative at the Hewlett Foundation in conversation with Dina Srinivasan from Yale Law School, Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the Open Markets Institute and former Regulations Counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School on March 25 at 11 am Pacific Time.

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Further Exploration of Europe’s Digital Services Act

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On January 27th, the Cyber Policy Center at Stanford hosted a webinar on the EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. The meeting was such a success that many participants asked for a follow up, allowing for more in depth conversations about the expected trajectory of these legislative proposals. On February 10th at 10 a.m. pacific, Daphne Keller, Joris van Hoboken en Guillermo Beltra will join the Cyber Policy Center for a follow up discussion. 

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Marietje Schaake

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marietje.schaake

Marietje Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.


 

Non-Resident Fellow, Cyber Policy Center
Fellow, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
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Daphne Keller

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Daphne Keller is the Director of Platform Regulation at the Stanford Program in Law, Science, & Technology. Her academic, policy, and popular press writing focuses on platform regulation and Internet users'; rights in the U.S., EU, and around the world. Her recent work has focused on platform transparency, data collection for artificial intelligence, interoperability models, and “must-carry” obligations. She has testified before legislatures, courts, and regulatory bodies around the world on topics ranging from the practical realities of content moderation to copyright and data protection. She was previously Associate General Counsel for Google, where she had responsibility for the company’s web search products. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, Brown University, and Head Start.

SHORT PIECES

 

ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

 

POLICY PUBLICATIONS

 

FILINGS

  • U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of Francis Fukuyama, NetChoice v. Moody (2024)
  • U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief with ACLU, Gonzalez v. Google (2023)
  • Comment to European Commission on data access under EU Digital Services Act
  • U.S. Senate testimony on platform transparency

 

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Director of Platform Regulation, Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology (LST)
Social Science Research Scholar
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Guillermo Beltra
Joris van Hoboken
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The Election Reform Agenda: A Deep Dive into H.R.1

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H.R. 1, the For the People Act, is a sweeping bill that aims to strengthen American democracy. Included in the bill are reforms to election administration, campaign finance, gerrymandering, and voting rights. H.R. 1 passed the House in 2019, and is likely to be brought up in Congress again this year.  

What exactly is included in H.R. 1 and what are the arguments of its supporters and detractors? Join us for a deep dive into four components of this historic legislation. Each panel brings together advocates, critics, and academics to describe the specific reforms under consideration.   

These panels are co-sponsored by the Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.

 

For more on H.R. 1, please visit our resource page here. 

Slides from the Brennan Center on the For the People Act can be found here.

 

Monday, Feb 1, 12:00 - 1:15 PM (PACIFIC): Election Administration 

H.R. 1 creates federal standards for the administration of elections, eases voter registration rules, expands ballot access through early and mail voting, and strengthens voting system security.  

 

Session Moderators: 

Nate Persily, Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and Internet at Stanford PACS and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University  
 

Session Speakers:

Leigh Chapman, Senior Director of Voting Rights Program, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights 
Nick Penniman, Founder and CEO, Issue One  
Wendy Weiser, Vice President for Democracy, Brennan Center for Justice  
Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT, Co-Director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
David Becker, Executive Director and Founder, Center for Election Innovation & Research

 

Tuesday, Feb 2, 12 - 1:15 PM (PACIFIC): Voting Rights

H.R. 1 recommits to the protections of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, restores felony voting rights, creates safeguards against purges of voting rolls, and requires voter-verified paper ballots.

 

Session Moderators: 

Nate Persily, Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and Internet at Stanford PACS and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University 

 

Session Speakers:

Dale Ho, Director, ACLU Voting Rights Project  
Myrna Perez, Director, Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program  
Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF)  
Guy-Uriel Charles, Edward and Ellen Schwarzman Professor of Law, Duke Law School


 

Monday, Feb 8, 12 - 1:15 PM (PACIFIC): Gerrymandering

H.R. 1 bans partisan gerrymandering, establishes uniform rules for the drawing of districts, and requires independent redistricting commissions for congressional redistricting.

 

Session Moderators: 

Nate Persily, Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and Internet at Stanford PACS and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University 

 

Session Speakers:

Ben Ginsberg, Lecturer, Stanford Law School  
Ruth Greenwood, Co-Director of Voting Rights and Redistricting, Campaign Legal Center 
Michael Li, Senior Counsel, Brennan Center’s Democracy Program  
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

 

Tuesday, Feb 9, 12 - 1:15 PM (PACIFIC): Campaign Finance

H.R.1 includes several changes related to disclosure of certain campaign finance activities, regulation of on-line campaigning, and enforcement through the Federal Election Commission.

 

Session Moderators: 

Nate Persily, Co-Director of the Program on Democracy and Internet at Stanford PACS and the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project 
Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University 

 

Session Speakers: 

Bradley Smith, Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor of Law, Capital University Law School  
Richard Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, New York University School of Law 
Meredith McGehee, Executive Director, Issue One  
Alex Kaplan, Vice President of Policy & Campaigns, RepresentUs  
Adav Noti, Senior Director, Trial Litigation & Chief of Staff, Campaign Legal Center


 


 

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Panel Discussions

Recommendations for the New Administration

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A new administration and Congress provide a key opportunity to improve US cybersecurity and the governance of digital technologies. Yet the challenges appear daunting: viral disinformation, widespread privacy violations, algorithms biased by race, class and gender, ransomware running rampant, and unprecedented tech company scale and market dominance. Additionally, the US faces a persistent deficit in skilled cybersecurity workers, a lack of diversity in the field, and a public with wildly unequal broadband internet access.  Meanwhile, competition among governance regimes, specifically between the United States, Europe and China, has raised the stakes over whether democracies or authoritarian governments will set the rules for the internet. The policy choices made by the new administration will play a pivotal role in shaping our global future. On February 24 at 10am PST, join Kelly Born and Marietje Schaake of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, Michael Daniel of the Aspen Institute’s Cyber Group, and Karen Kornbluh for the German Marshall Fund to discuss cyber policy priorities for the new administration.

 

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Marietje Schaake

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marietje.schaake

Marietje Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of European Parliament where she worked on trade-, foreign- and tech policy. She is the author of The Tech Coup.


 

Non-Resident Fellow, Cyber Policy Center
Fellow, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
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Karen Kornbluh
Michael Daniel
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